Downloaded from Brill.Com09/23/2021 12:19:32PM Via Free Access Introduction the Matter of Piety in an Age of Religious Change

Ruben Suykerbuyk - 9789004433106 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 12:19:32PM via free access Introduction The Matter of Piety in an Age of Religious Change In 1566, a wave of iconoclasm violently swept away many a church interior in the Low Countries. In August, the Beeldenstorm broke out in south-western Flanders, and by November, it threatened to spread to the southeastern part of Brabant as well. There, above the hilly landscape of the Hageland, arose the robust towers of Zoutleeuw’s collegiate church of Saint Leonard (figs. 1 & 2). Watchmen were installed in the church both day and night, and messengers were con- tinually sent out to neighbouring towns in order ‘to have tidings from the Geuzen’.1 Indeed, there was much to protect. The town’s political and economical heyday may have been over, but it was still one of the seven chief-villes of the Duchy of Brabant (fig. 3).2 The church itself, long since the seat of a deanery, retained its importance. In 1566, upon entering the building via the portal in the west front, pilgrims and parishioners saw a richly furnished sacred space (fig. 4). After being welcomed by a Marianum hanging from the vaults and crossing themselves at the brass holy-water font (fig. 5), they could walk along the eight side chapels distributed along both sides of the nave. Each was equipped with its own altarpiece. While most of the older works were carved in wood, the more recent pieces had been painted by important and still living masters such as Pieter Aertsen or Frans Floris. The latter’s Saint Hubert altarpiece had only recently been installed, in December 1565, and a third triptych from his work- shop was soon to be added. The primary destination for pilgrims lay a little further on, in an annex to the southern transept. The wall above its doorway was covered with a monumental depiction of the Last Judgment. Through the doors they would enter Saint Leonard’s chapel, where a miraculous sculpture of the saint was placed in a tabernacle on top of a carved, gilded altarpiece. The ensemble was lit by an arched, brass candelabrum, which stood just in front of the altar, its shimmer honoring the thaumaturgic cult object, the very reason for the pilgrims’ visit. Parishioners, on the other hand, might Figure 1 have been drawn to the choir. The sanctuary was closed to laypeople Zoutleeuw, church of Saint by a rood loft carrying a monumental triumphal cross with life-size Leonard, façade sculptures of Our Lady and Saint John at either side (fig. 6), but © KIK-IRPA, Brussels © Ruben Suykerbuyk, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004433106_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Ruben Suykerbuyk - 9789004433106 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 12:19:32PM via free access 2 Introduction Figure 2 Anonymous photographer, Church of Saint Leonard at Zoutleeuw, seen from the south, late nineteenth century, Ghent, University Library, BRKZ.TOPO.588.B.04 Figure 3 Jacob van Deventer, Map of Zoutleeuw, c. 1550, Brussels, KBR Figure 2 Anonymous photographer, Church of Saint Leonard at Zoutleeuw, seen from the south, late nineteenth century, Ghent, University Library, BRKZ.TOPO.588.B.04 Ruben Suykerbuyk - 9789004433106 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 12:19:32PM via free access The Matter of Piety in an Age of Religious Change 3 Figure 3 Jacob van Deventer, Map of Zoutleeuw, c. 1550, Brussels, KBR Ruben Suykerbuyk - 9789004433106 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 12:19:32PM via free access 4 Introduction Figure 4 Floor plan of Zoutleeuw’s church of Saint Leonard, with indication of the entrances (arrows), Saint Leonard’s chapel (A) and the churchwarden’s room (B) (based on Lemaire 1949, p. 199, fig. 197) Ruben Suykerbuyk - 9789004433106 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 12:19:32PM via free access The Matter of Piety in an Age of Religious Change 5 Figure 5 Holy-water font, 1468– 1469, Zoutleeuw, church of Saint Leonard © KIK-IRPA, Brussels spying through the fencings, it must have been possible to catch a glimpse of the brass eagle lectern (fig. 7), or the more than five me- ters high Easter candlestand in the same material, cast in the 1480s by Renier van Thienen from Brussels. Arguably, the church’s most imposing structure stood a little further, in the northern transept. There, an 18-meter-high sacrament house of white stone of Avesnes, which had been carved only 15 years before by Cornelis Floris, was lighted by candles on a brass fence surrounding the venerable, micro- architectural monument. During liturgical services, this already rich set of objects would be supplemented by all sorts of vessels and implements in precious metal – monstrances, chalices, ostensories, censers – manipulated by clergymen dressed in rich fabrics, reading aloud from more or less decorated books with sacred content.3 Eventually, Zoutleeuw was spared from any iconoclastic attacks, and the subsequent absence of drastic baroque refashioning in combination with the collegiate chapter’s pledge of allegiance to the French revolutionaries would further safeguard the church interior from significant losses. This combination of factors increasingly set it apart from other churches in the Low Countries, and would ul- timately give Saint Leonard’s church the exceptional status it now holds. Perhaps most famously, the prolific Leuven art historian Ruben Suykerbuyk - 9789004433106 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 12:19:32PM via free access 6 Introduction Figure 6 Jan Mertens, Triumphal cross, 1480–1484, Zoutleeuw, church of Saint Leonard © KIK-IRPA, Brussels Jan Karel Steppe referred to it as the ‘sanctuary of the Brabantine Late Gothic’, and in November 2016 – exactly 450 years after the Beeldenstorm – the Flemish Government definitively listed 18 objects from the ‘exceptionally rich, late medieval and renaissance furnish- ings’ of Zoutleeuw’s church as inalienable heritage.4 There is little reason to doubt that, at the moment of the iconoclastic threats, the objects were equally prestigious and valuable to visiting pilgrims and parishioners. Still, they were definitely less unique. Ornamentally elaborate objects such as the sacrament house, for instance, were crucial elements in lay devotional life in the Low Countries. Yet, the fact that they had to be protected in 1566 makes it clear that they had become highly controversial as well. They stood at the center of a heated public debate on the matter of piety. This book revaluates religious material culture in Netherlandish lay piety during the long sixteenth century (c. 1450–1620) by con- fronting devotional objects with practices and their surrounding controversies in a microstudy of Zoutleeuw’s unique church of Saint Leonard. As a crucial watershed in the history of the Low Countries, the Beeldenstorm dramatically reveals the issues at stake. Recent Ruben Suykerbuyk - 9789004433106 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 12:19:32PM via free access The Matter of Piety in an Age of Religious Change 7 Figure 7 Eagle lectern, upper part bought in 1469, foot bought in 1480, Zoutleeuw, church of Saint Leonard © KIK-IRPA, Brussels studies of the events have firmly established that the actions were in essence about religious convictions, and that the breakings should be understood as a physical reaction against the physicality and materiality of traditional, Catholic devotion.5 Lavishly ornamented objects in precious materials and their ritual handling had grown to become a major point of contention in the turbulent decades of the sixteenth century, when different reformers stood up to preach that the Church of Rome had been wrong all along in its particu- lar way of worshipping God. Hence, religious material culture – the broad range of devotional and liturgical objects, from monumental sacrament houses over cult statues and altarpieces to small vo- tive offerings or relics – formed the core of contemporary religious discussions, and therefore provides us with an ideal prism through which lay piety can be studied. This book takes Zoutleeuw’s exceptional collection of highly contested objects as both a point of depar- ture and as its primary source in order to map their actual usage and understand their changing meanings.6 In doing so, it consciously bridges the gap between art history and history. Prime attention will Ruben Suykerbuyk - 9789004433106 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 12:19:32PM via free access 8 Introduction not so much be paid to the signifying processes of artists, but rather to those of patrons and consumers. Whereas Michael Baxandall charted Patterns of intention of artists, this book will elucidate the intentions of patrons and the expectations of the communities they represented. This is not meant to discard the contributions of the executing artists, but rather to emphasize the significance of their patrons’ choices.7 A Pulverized Image? Status quaestionis In his inaugural lecture from 1939 at the University of Amsterdam, wittily entitled ‘The pulverized image’ (Het vergruisde beeld), Dutch historian Jan Romein claimed that a surveyable comprehension of the causes of the Dutch Revolt – of which the Beeldenstorm is tra- ditionally seen as one of the starting points – was hampered by in- creasing specialization and fragmenting of research into the period.8 There is much to be said both in favor and against his argument, but the historiographical image of lay piety in the Low Countries in the long sixteenth century remains fragmented and incomplete. For a long time, it failed to include an in-depth study of the material culture that stood at the heart of the debates as well as an accom- panying appreciation of what it actually meant to contemporane- ous believers.9 Until late in the twentieth century, basic views were characterized by a largely negative appreciation, dominated by nar- ratives of decline and decay.

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